Tides, shipping lanes and strong north-westerly winds have turned the coast of Texel, off Holland’s north coast, into a magnet for all kinds of flotsam and jetsam

For centuries lonely sailors and wide-eyed children have put messages in bottles, cast them into the sea then wondered where they would end up, reports the Sunday People.

Chances are if the bottle was thrown into the waves anywhere around northern Europe it would, like numerous before, have been washed up on the shore of a single unassuming island.

Tides, shipping lanes and strong north-westerly winds have turned Texel, off Holland’s north coast, into a magnet for all kinds of flotsam and jetsam.

It’s not only bottles that land on the Frisian Island in the Wadden Sea.

Fur coats, luxury car parts, frisbees, bicycles, machine guns, sex toys and left shoes are just some of the things found among the two tons of junk that turns up on Texel’s coast each day.

It also gets bird cages – one still had a dead parrot inside.

This amazing phenomena has led to a a culture of beachcombing developing on the island.

Texel is now famous for its scavengers, or jutters as they are known locally, who live off their finds and even build their homes from what turns up on the shores.

Booty: Some of the items in the museum

But as well as picking up a daily assortment of odd items, the friendly beachcombers also gain a lifetime’s worth of stories and secrets which the owners probably believed would be forever lost at sea.

With my producer Luke Marsh, I ­travelled to Texel to make Flotsam & Jetsam, a short film about the lives of these extraordinary men and women and hear about their connection to the sea.

One of the oldest and most loved ­jutters was 83-year-old Cor Ellen. He told us how he kept the bottles he finds and ­replies to the letters inside.

Incredibly, one young boy in the UK received Cor’s response and decided he would write back by tossing another bottle into the sea.

Sure enough, just a few days later, the second bottle washed up on Texel and Cor collected it and kept it.

In another find, beachcomber Jan Altrest found a box of personal items which had been thrown into the sea by Jonathan, a jilted lover from Suffolk.

Jan said: “Jonathan and Rebecca were going out and the girl broke it off . Jonathan got a bit angry and put all the nice things he had from her in a box and threw it into the sea at Lowestoft.

“We found it 10 days later.

Prime spot: Texel is just of the Dutch mainland

"When it was dried out we discovered 330 photos, some love letters and some cuddly toys – there was also some saucy objects, sex toys etc.”

The big finds for Texel’s expert ­beachcombers come the morning after major storms.

One morning after a ­forecasted squall, many of the island’s 13,000 population turned out on the beaches to find the sand covered in frisbees.

Other storms have dumped Second World War machine guns, ­bicycles and even dinosaur bones.

Gilles Van Mil, a Texel beachcomber for 40 years, has now set up a museums to collect all of the weird and wonderful things which appear on the island.

He said “We have found an aeroplane propeller, ropes, signs, anchors, life rafts and even a bird cage with a dead parrot still inside.

“We collect everything, we hang it up and give it a place but it’s the large amount that is so interesting.”

As well as exhibiting their finds, the locals are able to give a fascinating insight as to why certain items end up there.